


Sold

by geekprincess26



Series: Steel [2]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Arranged Marriage, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-16
Updated: 2016-11-16
Packaged: 2018-08-31 07:53:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8570506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geekprincess26/pseuds/geekprincess26
Summary: Sansa was no longer a little bird in a cage, to be sold at the queen's bidding.





	

“I’ll talk to her, Sansa,” Jon had said.

He had kept his word, too, in spite of her snapping at him like a dog at a fox’s throat after all of his kindness to her, after Daenerys Targaryen had told him he should marry her and she had dashed into her chambers to shake and panic and vomit. He had fumbled his way around her room until he had found clean cloths and water for her face and hair, and he had piled her bed high with blankets and called one of her maids to fetch tea and asked her repeatedly if she was sure she did not need a maester. The fourth time he had asked, one of her frayed nerves had finally snapped. She needed no maester, for she did not need to be coddled any more like the little bird Cersei Lannister had kept in this very same cage so many years before. When she opened her mouth to tell Jon this, however, a throat full of tears had replaced the words on the tip of her tongue, and when she swallowed them down, she made an ugly noise somewhere between a gag and a snarl. That only angered her, but at least it made it possible for her to speak to Jon without bursting into tears like the stupid, fragile little bird who had lived there before. 

“I will not be cared for by her,” she had snapped, “and I will not be played with by her like child’s toy. I care not if she is the Queen! She cannot sell me off or barter me away, or – or – sacrifice me like a pawn in a chess game!” 

Jon had winced almost imperceptibly then, but Sansa had not heeded him.

“When Petyr Baelish – “ she spat the name off of her tongue like a lemon gone bad, or a lick of mud, or a particularly horrible curse phrase, or all three put together – “sold me off to Ramsay Bolton – ” she spat even harder – “and Theon got me away, I told myself I would never let anybody sell me off again.” Jon had winced, more visibly this time, and Sansa had paused, but still she had not stopped. “And nobody will. I will be nobody’s pawn and nobody’s bargaining chip, queen though she may be. She can set her dragons on me if she likes, but she is madder than the rumors say if she thinks I will allow her to play me in this fashion, like one of those – one of those slaves they keep in that awful place she came from.”

At the mention of slaves, Jon’s jaw had twitched more noticeably, and a hurt look had flashed across his face, although the look had vanished within the time it had taken Sansa to blink. She had said no more about slaves or anything else, however, before Jon had dipped his head the way he always did when about to take leave of her.

“I’ll talk to her, then,” he had said, and Sansa could hear in his voice the hurt that had so briefly dominated his face.

“Jon, no.” The guilt had risen inside of Sansa as the had the bile not an hour before, and she had had lifted her hand as if to stay Jon’s departure, even though he had been much too far away for her to lay it on his arm. “I – I’m – I shouldn’t have – she won’t – ”

Jon had spared her one last resolute glance. Apparently, he and his aunt had two expressions in common. “I’ll talk to her, Sansa. Good night,” he’d said, and left.

The great wooden door had closed behind him with its customary thud, and Sansa had almost begun shaking again, but the door opened again to admit three maids, and so she had remained still as the girls had undressed her and shaken her head resolutely when they had asked if they could bring her anything else. Despite the tea they had brought her, she had slept very little that night, and when she had slept, she had discovered a new nightmare, one in which both Jon and the Dragon Queen had ridden their dragons and chased her down and cornered her like a wild rabbit and advanced upon her with twin swords emitting flames that matched their wild eyes.

Sansa awoke then, her muscles tightened and trembling, to see the faint shimmer of the setting moon outside of her window. She knew she would get no more sleep, so she summoned her maids to dress her and bring her another cup of tea. While she was sipping it, she wondered if she should have her maids dress her in the black and scarlet silk gown she had been reserving for the queen’s grand feast in three days’ time, just to see if it would please the queen and give her the slightest inclination to relent and tell Sansa that she need not marry Jon after all, and then she shook her head and thought better of it. Instead, she had her maids lace her into a silver linen kirtle and a deep gray gown with fine silver trim, and when they finished braiding her hair, she reached into the little wooden box sitting beside her trunk and fastened at her own throat the fine silver brooch, carved in the shape of a direwolf’s head, that Bran had had made for her on her last name day. She sent the maids after one of Daenerys’s household valets, and by the time he arrived to escort him to the household’s private breakfast rooms, she had managed to pieced together a smile, one she would need sorely if the queen had gotten there first.

The room, however, was empty when Sansa arrived and remained that way over the next hour while she nibbled her way through a biscuit and drank two mugs of the coffee the queen imported from the Arbor every month, all the while wondering if Jon had spoken to the queen yet and when the queen would summon her to discuss the marriage, as surely she must. The coffee kept Sansa awake but, in the absence of any word from the queen, did nothing to help her organize her scattered thoughts, so she forced down half of another biscuit before retiring to her solar to sew. The familiar motions of fingers against string against cloth helped to keep the shaking at bay, but her thoughts dashed from the swords in her nightmare to the queen’s steel-eyed smile at the previous night’s dinner to Ramsay beside the heart tree in the godswood, and her hands tightened on the needle, and the thread knotted and snapped beneath it, and the next thread snapped twenty minutes after that.

The luncheon hour passed slowly, and Sansa’s thread broke twice more before she laid aside her work and forced down some cold fish and a pomegranate, and she had her maids rearrange her hair, and while they did, she sipped more tea and tried to remember the names of that evening’s dinner guests so that she could strike up a conversation with one of them if the queen had still refused to speak to her. However, not an hour had passed after luncheon time when one of Daenerys’s valets knocked on her door and extended the queen’s invitation to a private audience that afternoon, and just over an hour and hundreds of harried stitches later, two Dothraki guards outfitted flawlessly in Targaryen black and crimson arrived to escort Sansa to the pillared stone terrace sprawled in front of the queen’s apartments. Sansa tried frantically during the ten-minute walk to conjure up some unassailable reason she and Jon could not marry, or, failing that, a superior marriage alliance for Jon, which brought back the prior night’s guilt. All her mind would do other than feel guilty, however, was race like Lady had raced Nymeria back in Winterfell before the world had dissolved into madness, and Sansa had barely had the time to summon the smile she had practiced on the valet that morning before she found herself curtsying before the dragon queen and heard her dismiss the guards. 

“I trust you are feeling less ill today than last night,” the queen offered by way of greeting after Sansa had murmured the customary, “Your Grace.” It was as close as she was wont to draw to small talk, which made Sansa uncertain whether to be relieved or wary. She merely nodded, however, and the queen nodded back.

“And I trust my servants are seeing to all you need,” she added. Sansa nodded again.

“Very well, Your Grace,” she replied, taking care to keep her voice as smooth and modulated as the lion queen’s had ever been. “Your hospitality is appreciated. As is your time,” she added, and let the dry tone in her voice sit between them as the servants arrived with trays of fruit and cheese and bread and a pitcher of wine. Not until they had left did the queen speak.

“Time spent finishing an unfinished matter is well spent,” she replied and plucked a grape from one of the trays before retraining her gaze on Sansa. “I trust, after all, that you wish to speak to me for the same reasons my nephew did this morning.”

Sansa barely lifted an eyebrow. “If you mean that he wished to continue the discussion you initiated about our marriage,” she answered, taking extra care not to stumble over the last word, “then you are correct.”

The queen must have expected Sansa to continue, for she raised her own eyebrow more than barely when Sansa did not speak again.

“I have already heard my nephew’s opinion,” she finally stated. “I assume you have your own.”

Sansa turned toward the gardens again. Before she could open her mouth to speak, she saw a huge winged figure streaking across the sky beyond the gardens and over the cliffs. Sansa, rising from her chair to see it better, could just make out the glints of green on its belly and of gold on its wings in the afternoon sun, and she remembered just enough from their tour of the palace’s dragon pits the previous night to recognize the figure as Rhaegal, one of the queen’s three dragons. No sooner had she thought of it than she turned to see Daenerys, now standing just behind her, throw back her head and laugh in a loud and very unqueenly fashion.

“He is in a fouler mood than I thought,” she said once her laughter had abated, and Sansa could tell that Jon had somehow impressed her. “The fouler, of course, for his skill teaching him that he more of a dragon than he thought. A pity. He would make a fine rider if he did not insist on staying North.”

Sansa’s questions were clearly written on her face, for the queen laughed again.

“He came to me this morning,” she said, and seated herself as Rhaegal spiraled over the cliffs and beyond their view. “He asked not to marry you, and when I disagreed with him, he left to go flying with Rhaegal.”

Sansa could not help then but agree with the queen, even though she did not say so. Jon would have to be in a foul mood indeed to go riding on a dragon. He hated most reminders of his father’s family, and only reluctantly had he mounted Rhaegal a few times during the queen’s prior sojourn in the North. At the end of every ride, Jon had descended the dragon with a flash of excitement in his eyes that he could not quite mask, but he had also been paler than usual, and when Bran had asked him about it, Jon had grimaced and replied that the experience was just as well left to Daenerys and the South.

But if Jon had been in such a foul mood, that meant that the dragon queen was still set on having him marry Sansa, and Sansa’s itched to grasp the direwolf brooch at her throat. She curled it into a fist at her side instead.

“Perhaps,” she said, attempting to select her words as carefully as the dragon queen, who had turned back to the platter, was picking over the bunches of grapes that lay on it, “his mood might not be as foul were he to marry a noble-blooded lady of his own choosing. ” That brought the queen’s gaze off of the grapes and onto her, but Sansa did not pause. “After all, I am sure he can find a woman of high lineage who has not been twice married or attainted for treason.”

The queen tossed a cluster of grapes back onto the platter, and it took a moment for her to exchange her annoyed look for her usual regal expression.

“And you have a copy of my proclamation that reversed the attainder,” she replied, “along with the copy of your annulment decree from my Hand. Your second husband is dead, and if I am told aright, your brother, the King, can produce no heirs. You will inherit Winterfell and the rule of the North from him.” She set one hand on the table and pointed squarely at the platter with the grapes on it, then set the pointing finger of her other hand against it for emphasis. “Moreover, you stand to inherit the Riverlands from your uncle should he remain childless.” She pushed her middle finger onto the table, leaving two fingers pointing at the platter. “And your cousin, Robin Arryn, rules the Vale.” She ticked down her ring finger. “Which gives you and therefore the man you marry sway over the larger half of Westeros.” She straightened her little finger next to the ledge of the platter. “Finally,” she said, “you are the daughter of Catelyn Stark, a fertile woman if ever one was.” She turned and narrowed her eyes at Sansa. “All of which means that both I and the many lords who have asked my nephew for your hand in marriage, unlike yourself, fail to see your prior misfortunes as the impediments to your desirability.”

Sansa’s hand drifted toward her brooch again, but again she willed it down and settled instead for biting her tongue.

“Of course,” the queen continued, “my nephew and I have received as many offers and more for his own hand. I would see both matters resolved now, before any disagreements over it divide the remaining houses and cause a bloodshed that Westeros cannot afford. I am its queen, and I have a duty to maintain peace, now more than ever.” She glanced out toward the gardens before turning back to Sansa. “I also have a duty to provide the people with a strong, fertile throne. I cannot give them one if my nephew and I fail to have children, or if we must constantly look North over our shoulders over an heir to that throne who is not bound in some way to ours.” Her eyes, which had softened when she had gazed at the garden, narrowed again. “Which means, as you are well aware, that you and no other will suit my nephew as his bride, much as he and no other will suit you as your bridegroom.” 

Sansa looked the queen straight in the eye. “I am aware,” she replied levelly. “I am also aware that every stratagem a monarch devises must have an alternative, in case it should fail. That is, if I died without an heir, or if my brother the King were to forbid me to marry, Jon would still need a suitable wife – ” she paused to pluck a grape off of the rapidly emptying platter – “whether it be my brother’s third cousin Lyra Stark, who would be his heir after me – ” she plucked a second grape to accompany the first in the palm of her left hand – “or either of the Karstark sisters to whom our crown would pass next – ” and a third – “or another of the beautiful young ladies whose fathers and brothers have offered their hands to my cousin.” She relieved the emptiest vine of its second-to-last grape. “Of course, my brother, as King, could legitimize Benjen Snow, our second cousin once removed, and if Jon prefers a bride other than myself, he could make a pact with Benjen for their children to marry and form an alliance that way.” She picked the final grape off of the vine and popped it into her mouth.

One corner of the queen’s mouth twisted upward, along with the opposite brow. It reminded Sansa of the odd grimace the lion queen had displayed when she was about to either laugh at someone or have him thrown into the dungeons. But the dragon queen did neither, and Sansa kept on chewing her grape.

The queen nodded slowly before she spoke again. “Or,” she replied, “if anything were to happen to my nephew, you would still need a suitable husband. I had considered, for instance, Gendry Baratheon of the Stormlands, or Harry Hardyng of the Vale – even, were the circumstances right, my Hand the Lord Tyrion, would he agree to wed you again.”

Sansa was glad then that she had finished eating her grape, or her swallow might have forced her to choke it down. Daenerys took no notice.

“As it is,” she continued, “I am told you wanted nothing to do with any of them or any other man who made you an offer, and all of that means nothing in any event, for nothing has befallen my nephew except a poor temper. Therefore, you must marry him or none at all, and as much as my nephew tells me you prefer the second alternative, it is not a choice you or I can afford to make.”

Sansa drew herself up in her chair as stiffly as she could. “Yes, I understand the lack of alternative,” she replied. “As do you, no doubt, after having your brother arrange for your own marriage to the lord of the Dothraki when you lived in Essos.”

The golden light that flashed briefly through the queen’s eyes might have been a trick of the afternoon sunlight, but even if it were, Sansa knew she had traversed well beyond the border of dangerous territory. Ramsay’s face would not stop flashing before her own eyes, however, and she pressed on. “I also know you understand the difficulties that come from such arrangements. I was sorry to hear of the losses that befell you, but when I heard of them, I knew you might understand the desire to suffer any fate other than undergoing such a situation again.”

The queen rose abruptly from her chair and turned toward the gardens. Sansa remained in her chair until the other woman turned back to her, this time with a light flush on each of her pale cheeks.

“Yes, I suffered losses,” she answered, and the steel had returned to her voice and to her face, and the look she had given Jon the night before, when he had tried to protest he announcement that he must have a wife, sat on her face again, only darker and steelier. “But from those losses came my gains. I gained my children.” She inclined her head toward the sky, where Sansa once again spotted Rhaegal soaring in the distance, before turning back to Sansa. “I gained the queenship of the Meereen and of Westeros. And were I to be given the chance, I would undergo the same losses in order to have what I gained. As, I have no doubt, will you and my nephew alike once you have been married for some time. I have faith in any case that your brother, the King, will understand the gains your marriage will make for the North. He will not refuse my request.” She arched her eyebrow again, as if daring Sansa to contradict her.

Sansa did not. Her gaze did not waver from the queen’s, but her hand reached up and clutched her direwolf brooch, and her jaw tightened, and she bit her tongue behind her teeth until they drew blood out of it. It took her a moment to feel the pain in her tongue, and when she did, her teeth moved to her lips instead of stopping, and she felt a drop of blood from her lip spill down her chin, and her shoulders sagged, and the dragon queen finally nodded.

“He is said to be far wiser than my brother, after all,” she went on, “and I look forward to meeting him at court. If the children you bear my nephew gain his wits, my nephew’s strength, my diplomacy, and your family’s fertility, they and my children may yet make your losses and mine worth the price for Westeros.”

Her eyes hardened each time she said the word “children,” and even her stony face could not quite mask the pain in them. Sansa thought she would still trade her womb for the queen’s in a moment were it possible, and knew the queen would have agreed to the trade, and barely stifled a wild bark of laughter at the irony of its being the one thing they both wished for, but she said nothing of it. Instead she nodded as briefly as she could, and the queen seated herself again and signaled for the servants.

As Daenerys had predicted, Jon rode Rhaegal until sunset. When he appeared for dinner, he was still in a foul mood, which became fouler still when his aunt summoned him and Sansa to yet another private audience afterward. He began glaring at her as soon as the door to her private solar had closed, but she merely raised her eyebrow again as she addressed him.

“Lady Sansa has agreed to wed you, Jon,” she said, “which means that the condition you demanded earlier has been met.”

Jon’s eyes darted to Sansa’s for a moment, and Sansa saw an anger in them that would have made her younger self cringe, but she also caught a flicker of the concern that she had seen when he had held her throughout her horrible bout of vomiting the night before. But it was only a flicker, and it disappeared beneath Jon’s anger as he rounded once again on his aunt. Daenerys’s eyes flashed again with the golden look Sansa remembered from that afternoon on the terrace, but Jon’s eyes flashed silver right back at her, as they did on occasion when he was exceptionally upset. 

“I will speak to Sansa about this alone, Aunt Daenerys,” he said. The queen narrowed her eyes at the use of the familiar title, but Jon ignored her and turned back to Sansa. “With your approval, of course, Sansa.”

Sansa could do nothing but nod. She watched the other woman turn on her heels and barely managed a curtsey to match Jon’s tight bow before the queen had swept out of the room. The guard closed the door, and Sansa turned to stare at the flames dancing in the room’s marble fireplace and feel the drops of sweat dancing down her back. She almost wished she had worn her silk gown this morning, for it would have been lighter than her linen dress, and she would not be feeling the pinpricks of heat running up and down her arms, and her face would not be as red as her hair. Slowly, she backed farther away from the fireplace and willed herself to breathe more slowly, the way she had taught herself to do so many years ago, so that the flush on her face and limbs would lighten and she would not shake, at least not outwardly where Jon could see it. So great was her concentration that she did not hear Jon saying her name until he accompanied his voice with a light touch to her shoulder. She whirled to face him and felt her flush deepen to where it had begun.

“You are – are you all right?” he asked. Sansa nodded mutely.

Jon’s eyes hardened again. “Did you truly agree to this?” he said, and Sansa lifted her chin and tightened her jaw and drew in another deep breath.

“Yes,” she finally answered, but received only his raised eyebrow in reply.

“She is rather determined about it,” Sansa continued, and she saw the silver flash in Jon’s eyes again, and found herself hastening to find something more to say. “And I could not argue with her political reasons for – for what she wants us to do. I tried listing other matches that would align with her reasoning, but she would have none of them.” She folded her arms across her stomach and bit her lip and felt her voice lower to cover its quiver. “She also said she was sure Bran would not disagree with her idea.” 

Jon’s eyes widened the way Nymeria’s had when Joffrey had attacked Arya on the Kingsroad back when they were children, before Lady had died, and his hands clenched into fists at his sides, and before Sansa could blink, he had crossed the room and slapped both of them against the marble mantelpiece. She watched his shoulders rise and fall, first rapidly, then more gradually. Sansa herself felt like a piece of marble, unable to move or speak, until Jon slowly turned to face her. His expression was inscrutable, and Sansa found herself hastening to speak again.

“Perhaps – well, perhaps you could have a different match, since you are after all her nephew and heir,” she said. “If you were to prefer a different lady, the lords could declare Bran fit to rule on his own, and you could marry, and she might be persuaded to put off finding a match for me until he adjusts to ruling without a regent.” 

She did not believe the words even as she spoke them, and neither did Jon, for he shook his head and rubbed his right hand over his face, a gesture Sansa remembered her father doing when he had been particularly upset about something or discussing a serious dilemma with her mother.

“No,” he said, and his voice was resigned rather than angry now. “You were right. She’s set to have her way about this.” He sighed and rubbed at his beard, and then his face began to redden such that even the light from the fireplace’s flames could not disguise it.

“Unless,” he said after a brief but awkward pause, “you would not have it, Sansa. If – I did not think – ” He reached back to rub the nape of his neck, and it took him a few more moments to meet her eyes. “If there is another lord or any other man at all whom you would have, then you will have him, and I will find a way to explain it to my aunt.”

Sansa’s face flushed as red as had Jon’s. “No,” she replied, and Jon’s eyes flicked back to the floor. Sansa looked curiously at the top of his head. “But – but, as I said before, if you were to want another lady, then – ”

Jon’s gaze snapped back up to hers. “No,” he said as firmly as had she.

Sansa nodded. There was an uncomfortable pause, which Jon broke by taking a hesitant step toward her. He was close enough to touch her arm if he moved it just a few inches, but he made no move to do so, and Sansa breathed an inward sigh of relief, for she did not need to start trembling again.

“Sansa,” Jon was saying by the time her breathing had evened, “I can talk to her again. Even if she disagrees, I might get her to delay for a time, and then – ”

“No.” Sansa had not planned to say the word with so much force, but out it came nonetheless. “That would only infuriate her more, and I would not chance her anger, not when it might fall on Bran.” The tears entered her eyes, but she had learned that the quickest way to battle them sometimes was to speak on, and so she did. “You are right. She is set on having her way about this.” She turned to face the door. “I suppose we ought to tell her we accept the arrangement.”

For several moments Sansa could neither feel nor hear Jon move beside her. When he did, he strode so forcefully to the door that Sansa could feel the whoosh of air his sudden turnabout had created. Almost before it registered with Sansa’s mind that he had reached the door, he flung it open and sent one of the guards scurrying to fetch the queen. Jon turned to stalk back from the door, and the look on his face was one Sansa had only seen once before, when she and Jon and Lyanna Mormont and their men had confronted Ramsay the day before they had taken back Winterfell, and Ramsay had told Jon how little he could wait to have Sansa back on the torture rack he had called his bed. When the dragon queen swept into the room, Jon directed the same look at her. For a moment she looked nonplussed, but then she raised her eyebrow and switched her gaze to Sansa, who did not blink.

“We have agreed to marry, Your Grace,” she said.

Daenerys nodded and looked to her nephew. “You agree, nephew?” she said, and it was more a statement than a question.

“Aye,” Jon replied and continued to glower at his aunt, who turned back to Sansa.

“Good,” she said. “We can send a raven to your brother tomorrow, and then to those of the Northern lords whom he wishes to attend your wedding with him. They will need one month to prepare, and after that – how long do you suppose it would take your brother to travel here?” She directed the last question at Sansa, who had just reopened the wound on her tongue from their discussion earlier that day. She forced herself to swallow the blood so she could reply, but Jon spoke before she could.

“Bran will not come South with no Stark to stay in Winterfell,” he said harshly, “nor will Sansa and I marry here.” He cleared his throat after a few moments, and Sansa turned to see that his cheeks had reddened again. “Unless Sansa wishes it,” he added. 

The queen was now raising both of her eyebrows at her nephew, but Jon did not flinch, and neither did Sansa as she turn to address the queen.

“If you wish us to marry sooner rather than later, Your Grace,” Sansa said, “it would probably take you and your court far less time to travel to Winterfell than it would for my brother to gather the Northern lords from their seats and journey here. You know that we have sufficient space there, and your court would enjoy our hot springs.”

The queen was silent for a moment. “You have rebuilt your sept since I was there?” she finally asked. From the sound of Jon’s weight shifting beside her, Sansa could tell that he knew as well as she that the queen already knew the answer to her own question.

“No,” Sansa said at the exact same moment that Jon did. Sansa glanced at him, and his glare had lessened, but not by much. She inclined her head in the way they had decided meant Jon should continue back when they had visited the houses of the Northern lords in their bid for support in the campaign against Ramsay Bolton.

“We will marry in the godswood,” he said, and his face suddenly flushed red as he added, “or in the place of Sansa’s choosing.”

Sansa belatedly wished then that she could in fact marry in Winterfell’s sept, for she had married neither Tyrion Lannister nor Ramsay Bolton there. But the sept was in ruins and could not be repaired until the men finished their own half-repaired living quarters, which they had taken up in order to give their own finished chambers to the refugees who had streamed into Winterfell as the wights had stormed the North. In any case, marrying Jon in a sept would not to stage the same show of Northern unity with their lords as would marrying in the godswood. 

“We are Northern, Your Grace,” she finally said, “and our people will expect us to marry according to the Northern custom, as the Wardens of the North and the Kings in the North and their families have always done.” 

The queen narrowed her eyes at them both, but at last she nodded.

“You have already planned your departure for ten days hence,” she said. “I and my court will follow three weeks from then. I will plan to arrive at Winterfell eight weeks from your departure.”

Less than three months from that day, Sansa realized, and her knees felt weak, and her hand gravitated toward the direwolf brooch again, and it was all she could do to bring it back down to her side, and she could barely nod at the dragon queen, let alone speak.

But Jon spoke for her. “We will expect you then,” he said. His words were clipped as they left his mouth, and Sansa knew without looking that he was staring at his aunt again the way he had stared at Ramsay. She felt the shaking coming on again and clenched her fists at her sides until her fingernails dug into her palms. She forced herself to focus on the queen, who was giving Jon a brief nod. He snapped a bow in her direction and turned to Sansa. His eyes were still blazing, but the concern had flickered back into them, and his voice was not ungentle when he said, “Good night, Sansa,” and left the room.

Sansa waited the bare minimum of time dictated by protocol before making her own departure, but she was still surprised to find Jon standing in the hallway just around the corner from the queen’s solar, halfway to the staircase up which she had fled the prior night. 

“Sorry for startling you,” he said, and Sansa saw that the concern had spread and melted away a good chunk of his glower, although he was still clearly unhappy. Sansa shook her head.

“It’s no trouble,” she answered, but her voice had sunk to a whisper, and Jon looked even more concerned when he reached out to touch her shoulder.

“Will you be all right, then?” he asked, and Sansa knew what he meant, but she did not feel particularly like vomiting at the moment, so she nodded and said, “Well enough,” and then began to feel guilty as she had done that morning. After all, angry though he might be, Jon had chosen to insert himself as a buffer between her and the full ire of his aunt, and he had done what he could in a tight corner to ensure that she did not get all of her own way about the matter. 

“What about you?” she asked, and Jon’s shoulders slumped a little, but he did not withdraw his hand.

“Well enough,” he replied, his words echoing hers, and one shoulder rose in a brief shrug. He opened and closed his mouth once or twice before he suddenly leaned forward, and Sansa’s eyes closed, and she felt him press a kiss to her forehead. He finally released her shoulder, and when she opened her eyes, it was just in time to see him stride down the hall and out of her sight.


End file.
